Perhaps Nelly will never learn so much, for Patroclus is an exceptionally intelligent and well-suppled horse. But she can learn a good deal of it. Patroclus had no idea of any gait but a walk or trot when I bought him, nor did he start with any better equipment than Penelope; and in less than a year he knew all that he knows now, and much that he has forgotten. For in the many High School airs which he once could at call perform, he is altogether rusty from sheer lack of usage. But the "moral" may remain, though the fable may have long since passed from the memory.
Some horses, who trot squarely, will go naturally from a walk into a little amble or pace, which is sometimes called a "shuffle." Often this is an agreeable and handsome gait, but not infrequently far from pleasant. Often, too, it will spoil the speed of the walk, as the horse will insensibly fall into it if pushed beyond his ease. A slower rate at a faster pace is always easier to a horse than the extreme of speed at the lesser gait. It is scarcely worth while in the East to try to teach a horse to amble or rack if he does not naturally do so, though it can often be done.
Apart from the agreeable and useful side of the true rack as a gait, it has not a few further advantages. In coming from a canter to a walk, a horse may be taught to slow up into a rack, and then drop to the walk, or to stop in the same manner. This enables him to come down without the least suspicion of that roughness which almost all horses show when stopping a canter, particularly if done quickly; unless, indeed, they be "poised" before being stopped, as a School-ridden horse always is from every gait. Moreover, when you rein a cantering horse down within the slowest limit of his speed at that pace, as to allow a team to pass, or for a similar purpose, if he knows how, he will fall into a rack, from which he can with much more comfort to himself and you resume the canter, than if he had fallen into a walk. A rack is not an interruption of the canter, as is a jog or walk, but a mere _retardando_, as it were. Still a rapid walk, a trot which varies from six to ten miles, and a well-collected canter suffice for any of our Eastern needs. These, and the gallop, moreover, are considered the only permissible paces by the School-riders of Europe.